


Evacuation Procedures

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Angst, M/M, gun violence tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:41:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7215448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Philanthropy era.  A mission gone wrong.  The codec goes on the fritz, and Snake and Otacon are separated, forcing them to make their respective ways to a predetermined safe house with no surety that their partner is alive.  (Self-indulgent angst, ngl)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evacuation Procedures

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to Syd, who supposedly lives in the same angst dumpster that I do

Everything was going to plan: Otacon was holed up near the control room in his stealth camo to hack the security cameras while Snake slinked across the facility, Otacon muttering instructions in the codec, to where the Metal Gear prototype was held. It was an old, familiar model. Explosives to the legs. Too easy.

In the resulting chaos, Snake managed to steal himself a disk full of info files from a security panel and also upload Otacon’s virus. The disk would be quite revealing when unveiled to the public.

Too easy.

It was no wonder it all immediately went to shit after that.

“Snake, we’ve got company,” Otacon said in his ear.

Snake was currently hiding not far from his exit, but his path was blocked by soldiers. This was bad. If there could be so many men crammed into this one room, their estimate on the number of personnel on this base had been wildly off. Getting out of here would be tricky.

After blowing up half of the warehouse, these soldiers were going to be shooting more than asking questions.

In fact, Snake could hear shooting through his codec already, two crisp shots then silence.

“Otacon, are you alright?”

“For the moment… You?”

“For the moment.”

“I…” Otacon’s voice quaked strangely.

He was scared. That meant his position probably looked just as dangerous as Snake’s, if not worse.

“Snake, I…”

“Out with it, Otacon,” Snake said, perhaps too sharply because his chest was tight and he was multi-tasking, going through in his mind exactly what had to be done, which exits he could take, how to stay alive, keep the disk, somehow get to Otacon and back him up…

“I don’t—”

Bzzzt. With a sharp surge of static in Snake’s ear the codec suddenly went dead.

“Otacon?”

Silence.

“Dammit.” Every inch of Snake’s being was very adamant about that damnation. Somewhere Otacon was in deep shit and Snake had landed him there.

But there were priorities. If Snake couldn’t get to Otacon’s position alive, he had to get out of this compound alive instead. Unfortunately, Snake’s life had value, measured in future missions, future defunct Metal Gears. And there was the disk to think about…

Fuck.

He knew what Otacon would say. Stay with the plan.

_Fuck._

He reloaded and stuck low to the shadows.

It was agonizing, must’ve only been about ten minutes but it could have been centuries. He got out, but barely, a bullet grazing a tear into the shoulder of his sneaking suit. Then he was running like hell, scrambling through their wire-cut hole in the perimeter fence, and then poof, disappeared, into the trees.

He caught his breath much later, emerging onto a dusty country road, where an empty car was parked waiting for him. He slid into the backseat and wrestled himself into the coat there, covering his suit.

His internal clock counted the time precisely. Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty-five minutes.

No sign of Otacon.

He touched two fingers to his ear.

“Otacon.”

No answer.

Snake tried other channels, but the codec was effectively busted.

“God fucking dammit, Hal.”

He reached the point where he couldn’t wait in this one place any longer, and swore again heatedly.

If Otacon was making his escape, he would need this car more than Snake. Snake heaved forward to fish his cigarettes out of the glove compartment, then left the car and started running, in the direction of a gas station in the far distance.

He tried not to think about the fear in Otacon’s voice during his last words to him.

x

The procedure in an emergency separation was to skip town and meet at the safe house. The safe house was only a couple states away in their current city, not too shabby, but the shortness of the trip ahead did little to settle Snake’s nerves as he stopped by their joint safety deposit box the next morning.

Clothes. Keys. Cards and money.

He’d been hoping that Otacon’s key would be gone, but no, it was sitting there in the box untouched. Either Snake was a step ahead of him, or…

Well. There was an entirely real possibility that Snake had left his partner for dead last night.

Frowning, tired, and stinking of cigarettes, Snake left Otacon half of the clothes, the comfier looking ones, and locked up. He could fret later. Right now he had to get himself and the disk a few states over.

He took a Greyhound, such a travesty of normalcy that he almost wanted to laugh.

The bus was mostly empty except for some older women who smiled at him, because to them he was just a tired-looking guy with growing scruff, now in a t-shirt and jeans. A fellow bright-eyed traveler perhaps. Traveling people tended to look forward, and that meant it was hard for them to spot a man who was running away from the recent past.

As the bus wheezed into motion, Snake sat near the back with his small backpack of provisions, one knee jostling with pent up energy.

There was always this possibility, that something could happen to one of them, but Snake had always lived in the strange comfort of assuming he’d be the first to die. Violently. Wretchedly. Like a dog.

It had always been in the running for both of them, but a part of Snake had never wanted it for Otacon.

He pressed his forehead to the sticky window and let the subtle vibrations jangle the thoughts out of his head.

x

Snake was in some indeterminable place, in his sneaking suit but somewhere shifting and dark, like television static but real, obscured in falling snow or fog. He was on high alert, waiting for something.

Beep beep! The codec was calling, but for some reason he couldn’t answer it.

Beep beep! Beep beep!

A figure appeared in front of him, and mechanically he raised his arms and fired his gun, trained and precise. Bam! Right in the chest.

And then suddenly the fog lifted, the world jerked into hyper focus, and Snake was staring at Otacon clear as day in front of him, in an unassuming t-shirt, utterly harmless but with his hands hovering over his chest shakily and blood blossoming there, soaking the logo.

Snake shouted something, yet he couldn’t hear himself, and rushed to close to space between them just as Otacon’s legs gave way and he fell forward.

Training, precision. Snake rolled Otacon onto his back carefully, fumblingly tore open his shirt. This was too much blood for one bullet. Snake’s bullet… There was blood everywhere.

Suddenly Snake was in civilian clothes too, just a plain shirt and sweatpants, and they were in their crowded apartment, Otacon bleeding into the living room carpet. Their lodgings, a makeshift home… Snake’s bloody hands scrambled to Otacon’s face, hooked under his jaw to hold his head, and Otacon was crying behind his glasses, scared and in pain. His mouth kept moving but blood was welling up in it, wet and bubbling, gasps and coughs of red so thick it was black.

“I…”

Cough. He was shaking, raising a hand to Snake’s wrist, his fingers cold.

“Snake, I… I don’t—”

But that was all he could get out around the blood, and Snake could do nothing but stare down at him wide-eyed as the fear in his expression went slack, gravity pulling the tears down into his hair even after he was already dead.

Snake tried to speak, but his voice was somehow mute, a cloying silence as Otacon’s gurgling breaths stopped, static, fizzing in his ears, growing in volume.

The codec that he couldn’t answer: Beep beep! Beep beep! Beep bee--!!

Snake choked on the air in his throat, gasping and jolting awake.

He was wide-eyed at the back of the Greyhound in evening, the bus rattling on calmly, the murmur of the old women up a few seats the only other sound beyond his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

Slowly, he relaxed back into his seat, still panting, the smell of his own sweat pricking his nose. A dream.

Otacon…

He squeezed his eyes shut, but then as if afraid of what unbidden images might still be waiting in that darkness, he snapped them back open again and stared pointedly out of the window.

It was starting to rain, trails of water down the glass. Everything seemed hyper focused. His heart was still staggering and hammering.

This short trip was going to be longer than expected.

x

The safe house was in the backwoods of Missouri, a clump of forest bordered by stretches of farmland, the sort of large but cheap house with a mailbox flush with the unpaved road, in the middle of nowhere but also central. When Snake pulled up in a rented car, there was a package waiting for him on the doorstep. The return address said it was from Anita Stinger. Under different circumstances, he might have better appreciated the joke.

He let himself inside and systematically checked every room. Little tricks and bobs told him nobody had entered the house since he last left—doorstops in place, unperturbed strings on windowsills. No intruders, but the quiet stale emptiness of the house also meant no Otacon.

He opened the package in the living room. It was a simple flip cellphone, chunky and old-fashioned.

He lounged on the sofa and went through half a pack of cigarettes, one after the other, frowning ahead at his own spinning thoughts, until finally the cellphone rang, as if attracted to the smoke.

“Anita,” he answered.

“Hello, dear, did you get that bottle of wine I sent you?” came the familiar voice of Natasha Romanenko. He could picture the cigarette perched between her fingers, mirroring his own. By wine she was referring to the disk.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a good one.” It’s safe.

She hummed. “Lost track of you boys. I was worried.”

“Technical difficulties. I’m fine.”

“And how is your friend?”

Friend… After a long pause, Snake said, “Haven’t heard from him.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up somewhere,” Natasha said, her voice taking on a brief kindness that Snake sort of resented. “I’ve put more money in your boys’ account, so be good.”

“Thanks, Anita.”

“Any time, dear. Take care of yourself.” With firmness she added, “We’re counting on you.”

“I know,” said Snake. 

She hung up with a click and for a moment Snake just listened to silence before closing the phone.

A lot of people counted on him, he knew that perfectly well.

x

For the next few days, Snake meandered. He spent a lot of time on the house’s front porch, sitting on the steps and taking in the whisper of the trees overhead, the drafty shade. He had to drive forty minutes to get to the nearest grocery store, and while he was there he picked up every reasonable-looking dime novel in the place. He read, he smoked. He waited.

It’s not like he and Otacon were never separated before or they didn’t flit around from apartment to apartment anyway, but adjusting to this house was strangely difficult. Snake usually spent his mornings alone wherever they were, but often with the knowledge that Otacon was sprawled out asleep in the other room. Idly cleaning Otacon’s late night coffee mugs, etc. The feeling of _I’m Alone_ seemed to resound in this house.

He slept in a first floor bedroom because a part of him was still offering the upstairs master to Otacon. If Otacon was alive, he was going to be shook up when he arrived. Snake would have to make sure he slept properly.

Snake sat in his own bed, above the well-made sheets, and finished the last of the dime novels. None of them had been much good, really. He was out of cigarettes. There were more in the kitchen of course but he didn’t want to go get them. A part of him wanted to drink himself silly instead, but that was such a memory of his past self that he couldn’t quite bear it. Otacon would hate it anyway.

Otacon was pissing him off, creeping into every thought as an addendum.

Snake lay back in the bed, legs unfurling, and rubbed a hand over his eyes, focusing on not thinking at all.

He’d rather Otacon just be dead than sit around wondering like this.

… No. That wasn’t true. He didn’t want Otacon to be dead.

Snake, despite everything that had happened in his life, often quietly hoped, and that was something he hated utterly about himself. Hope led to wrenching disappointments, yet there it was, always.

He wanted Otacon to be alive.

Snake was pressing his eyes hard enough for stars and blips of color to appear at the backs of his eyelids, but that couldn’t obscure the mental image of Otacon’s face, smiling crookedly.

Sometime before that failed mission, they had kissed. They never wound up talking about it, but they had kissed once, entirely sober in the middle of the day, in the kitchenette of their then-apartment. Neither one of them initiated it, it just happened, like a string pulling their chests together. Otacon’s breath had been unpleasantly strong with coffee, and Snake’s arms had hooked around him and pulled him closer, and Otacon’s hands had been on his neck right near his hammering pulse.

It hadn’t really mattered then what it meant, but now it damn well mattered.

Snake couldn’t remember if this face he was picturing was a memory from that kiss or some sort of glossy reimagining. Otacon’s face, smiling, his eyes all bright for the future, glasses askew.

A quick flash of tongue over his bottom lip and a breathless laugh.

And before that, Otacon’s mouth against his own.

On his bed in the safe house, Snake trailed a hand between his legs, palming the front of his jeans absently.

In his head, he remembered those awkward first apartments, up in each other’s space. Otacon after showers, wet hair, bare chest, towel held firmly at his hips as he tried to maneuver around Snake for his toothbrush. Months later, the heat that would sit comfortably in Snake’s face whenever he heard the shower going in the other room, Otacon’s voice mumbling nonsense in the spray because he thought Snake couldn’t hear, an exclaimed curse when he knocked over the shampoo.

Snake would never admit how he sometimes imagined Otacon there in the water, naked and gangly, absently blowing droplets from his lips and squinting myopically at the soap rack.

It was a funny picture but also somehow it coiled in Snake’s chest and wouldn’t let go. 

He rubbed back and forth over the growing erection in his pants, shifting his body, parting his thighs.

God, this was so fucked up. _He_ was so fucked up.

But he didn’t give a shit, because the sparks of excitement in his groin were something he could get lost in. Hot and breathless and _thoughtless_ , just what he wanted.

Just why did it have to be Otacon’s face? Otacon’s mouth.

Otacon wasn’t exactly a looker, but Snake had grown accustomed to the protrusion of his boney shoulders under t-shirts, the sparse hair on his chest and stomach, the inkling of vertebrae at his back with one center knob slightly swollen from slouching in his chair all the damn time. Snake was used to his voice, and his quick smiles, and his equally quick barbs of passive aggression.

Somewhere along the line Otacon had grown very attractive.

Snake could picture him in one of his time-softened t-shirts, his chest visible through the loose neck. Pale, with goosebumps. Snake would thumb a hardened nipple through Otacon’s shirt, and… What sort of noise would that elicit?

Snake was hurting himself, palming the crease of his jeans roughly, but the pain was good.

Otacon’s lips on his own again. Otacon’s lips at the zipper where his hand was now.

What would Otacon say in this fantasy? _“I want your cock.” “Fuck me.” “David.”_

_“I love you.”_

“Fuck!” Snake choked, and took his hand away from himself, pounded it into the mattress as a fist.

He couldn’t do this. Pleasure was there in his lower stomach, waiting, but he couldn’t. Goddammit.

He rolled over, stuffed his face in the pillow, and slowly stretched his arms and legs, methodically, as if he was in pain.

“Fuck.”

Hope was killing him.

x

It was almost a week after Snake’s arrival, and he was rereading one of the less bad books on the living room sofa late in the evening, when suddenly the beam of headlights arched through the front window. Tires on gravel.

Snake sat sideways, eyes sharp on the door for what felt like a very long time. His gun was on the coffee table in front of him.

Footsteps on the front stairs. The jangle of keys in the lock.

Thump. The door eased open slowly, paused, and then finished its venture. Snake stood immediately.

Otacon was in the doorway in a long coat, stuffing the keys into his pocket, eyes flitting straight to Snake above the glasses low on his nose, some brief expression passing over his face before a thin smile covered it. It wasn’t much of a smile, really. More of a digging in at the corners of his mouth.

He stepped in and closed the door, relocked it, and in the meantime Snake came to stand in front of him. When Otacon turned back, he kept looking down, as if he couldn’t quite meet Snake’s eyes.

“Hi,” Otacon said. “I’m here.”

He looked tired, bags under his eyes, stubble. A big purple bruise was high up on his left cheekbone.

But he was alive.

Snake just nodded, watching him closely.

Otacon leaned his back against the door with sigh and finally looked up at Snake’s face. Otacon’s eyebrows did a funny thing, kind of collapsed inwards, and he puffed out a strained laugh.

“… I thought you might be dead,” Otacon admitted, voice hitching.

“Me too,” said Snake quietly.

“We’re like cockroaches, huh. Pretty hard to kill us.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

“Sounds like a plan, Snake... The disk?”

“It’s safe. I haven’t uploaded it yet… Wanted to make sure our position was safe for awhile first.”

“Always on top of things.” Relief was melting into Otacon as jitteriness, his hands fidgeting at his pockets but his eyes glued to Snake now that they’d dared look his way. “And you?” Otacon asked.

“What about me?”

“You’re ok?”

Snake shrugged a shoulder jerkingly. “I’m fine.”

“That’s good...”

Snake took a step forward into Otacon’s space and reached out a hand for his cheek. Otacon instinctively stiffened, but then as if realizing who it was, he relaxed again as Snake’s thumb outlined the bruise under his eye.

“How’d you get this?” Snake asked gruffly.

“Fell like an idiot.”

“Hmm.”

“Snake…” Otacon stopped himself, but Snake didn’t want that, he didn’t want any more technical difficulties or bravado interrupting Otacon again. So Snake held his gaze carefully. Their faces were pretty close all of the sudden. “I missed you,” Otacon finished lamely.

“… Me too.” Snake slowly pressed his lips just above his thumb, a tender touch to the bruise on Otacon’s cheek.

Otacon breathed in through his teeth.

“It doesn’t hurt…” Otacon rasped. “I’m alright.”

“Otacon.” Snake shifted and their noses slotted together awkwardly, their lips hovering. “I want to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

“Just before the codec went out, you were trying to tell me something. What was it?” Snake pulled back just enough to get a better view of Otacon’s face, his eyes.

“Oh. Well…” Otacon’s face was nicely flushed, every perfectly imperfect feature on display, and his voice was quiet and breathy, an almost whisper due to the proximity. “It looked real bad. I was pretty sure I was about to die.”

“Yeah.”

“I just wanted you to know I didn’t regret it.”

Snake nodded his head distantly, as if that sentence hadn’t completely winded him.

“Dave?”

Snake closed the distance between them, crushed his lips to Otacon’s, palm splayed across Otacon’s chest, pressing him gently back into the door. 

Otacon’s hands came up to hold firmly at Snake’s elbows, bunching at rolled-up sleeves.

It was good. It was perfect.

There were tongues this time. A noise rumbled in Otacon’s throat.

Snake eased a thigh in between Otacon’s legs and pressed closer.

Snake was used to kisses being a precursor to sex, a triumphant primal roar of a thing, thoughtless and casual, but kissing Otacon, kissing him _now_ , felt like his whole world zeroed in on one messy unnamed feeling. He let this be the whole world, for just this moment, because later there would be duty and responsibility and greater ideals, but right now all he wanted was Otacon’s heart pounding against his palm through his shirt.

Otacon whined, clinging to him through desperate wet kisses, and at some point his crotch brushed against Snake’s thigh, hard through the fabric of his pants. Snake wanted this person so much. His teeth grazed Otacon’s lip and Otacon gasped breathlessly into his mouth, hips moving, rubbing tantalizingly against Snake’s leg.

Snake encouraged it, hand lowering to feel the taut and shaking muscles of Otacon’s belly as he kissed the downy hairs at the side of Otacon’s jaw, lower, sucked and bit at the start of Otacon’s neck.

“Dave—”

“Hal.”

Otacon was riding his leg in earnest now and Snake positioned himself to press into Otacon harder, eliciting a small curse. Snake wanted this. He wanted Otacon to be alive and to feel good like this, and to watch the blotchy flush on his face, his front teeth barely exposed on his gasps.

Otacon panted, breath in Snake’s face, and Snake curved a hand behind him to roughly palm Otacon’s ass through his pants. That got a perfect, choking moan.

Otacon’s face was staring up at him, foggy but full of this glorious sort of desperation and longing, and Snake pressed a kiss to his forehead, strangely chaste and tender, because in this moment he couldn’t think what else to do with this soft feeling in his chest, matching Otacon’s yearning.

Then Otacon squeezed his eyes shut and he was shuddering in Snake’s arms, grinding through paroxysms of completion, breath hitching deliciously in his throat. He came, fully clothed, and he pressed up against Snake’s chest, heart like a rabbit’s, big heaving breaths into Snake’s shoulder.

They were too close together for Snake to quite know where he was kissing now, just brushing his lips against whatever skin he could find, Otacon’s face or his neck or his jaw. In the slowly encroaching calm, Snake wrapped his arms around Otacon and just held him, tightly. His own jeans were too tight, a thrumming half-erection, but that didn’t matter right now.

He was busy kissing Otacon’s hair now. His forehead. His eyebrows.

“Where’d your glasses go?” Snake mumbled and Otacon laughed, a little high pitched.

“God…”

The glasses had somehow clamored between them to the floor. Neither of them really wanted to pull apart to reach for them, but it was necessary so they didn’t step on them and blind Otacon for the night.

When Otacon straightened again, adjusting his glasses on his face, Snake kissed him on the mouth one last time, just a quick contact.

Otacon was beginning to look embarrassed. “Uh, that was kinda…”

“Welcome back,” Snake interrupted, firm and earnest.

Otacon grinned, very relieved. “Welcome home,” he corrected.

They both laughed at the very idea, but having him here, this safe and whole person in front of Snake, within Snake’s loosely encircling arms, had become something of a godsend.

Hope led to wrenching disappointments, but every once in awhile you found someone who could manage to stick by you anyway and survive.

They had a late meal together—Otacon was famished—and everything slipped back into its rightful place.

x


End file.
